Lida
Beautiful, beautiful writers! I’ve had the most astonishing week. Let me tell you all about it!
After spending several blissful hours with my Muse and my epic poem about President Polk, I decided to repeat Training Exercise #23 several times, for I am a firm believer in training exercises. I sought out the virile embrace of the Beastmaster, and did my best to improve my skills.
I felt as if I was making terrific progress! Everything was going swimmingly — when the door crashed open. It was Ethelie, and she was Very Unhappy. Oh, bother, just thinking about it makes me Capitalize as she does.
“This isn’t what it looks like,” I began. Even though it was exactly what it looked like, that’s just the sort of thing one’s obligated to say under the circumstances. But she wasn’t concerned about that.
Ethelie Does Not Approve of my Methods
“Pie?” she said, and I trembled, for I have never heard a single word carry so much scorn and derision. “Pie?” she repeated. She loomed over me, stern and unforgiving. I tried to be brave, truly I did, but it was all I could do to keep myself from pulling the covers up over my head.
It was dreadful.
“Leave,” she said to the Beastmaster, and even he was not brave enough to defy her — in his own quarters!
She was dreadful, and now I was alone with her. I was trembling (and not in a delicious way!), and Ethelie did not disappoint. I will spare you, lovelies, and not share all her words with you. Suffice it to say that Ethelie was not pleased that I offered pie and encouragement last week, instead of threats and lamentations. She explained her point of view, vehemently, for almost forty-five minutes before she started to wind down. It was as if the steel rod up her, ah, spine turned to taffy and softened in the white-hot heat of her rage.
She summoned the last of her venom for her parting admonition. “You will never write like that again,” she said, glaring with her basilisk-eyes. Then she slammed the door behind her, and I was alone.
I wept, beauties, I do not mind telling you. For though she was no longer with me, her cruel words still echoed in my head, and it was almost as if she still loomed over me, saying all those horrid things!
I spent the rest of the weekend wandering forlornly about the Directorate headquarters, devastated. I would never be able to write anything ever again, I was sure, after being so forcefully silenced. Oh, how I wept. I was inconsolable.
Or so I thought.
In Which I Am Consoled Despite Myself, and Find My Voice Again
Sunday night, I found myself wandering miserably about the conservatory, dreaming of happier days. I considered getting in my zeppelin and flying away from the Directorate; but I knew Ethelie’s words would stay with me, no matter how far and fast I flew! All I could do, it seemed, was mope about and feel dismal.
My morose musings were interrupted by Boggins, the janitor. We’d once been close, and I found our old closeness rekindling. I poured out my woes, and he listened patiently as he waxed and polished the floor.
“And so,” I concluded, weeping bitter tears, “that vicious old woman’s cruel words have silenced me! I can no longer write!”
Boggins looked up from his work, and shrugged. “Screw her,” he said.
My goodness. That was all it took: Boggins broke Ethelie’s devastating spell. I felt my perspective shift deliciously, and once again the world was fresh and new!
“Boggins!” I cried. “Thank you! thank you!” I kissed him, and ran off, for I had work to do.
A Visit to Ethelie
But before I could return to my poem about President Polk, I knew I had to take steps to protect myself from Ethelie. Oh, yes, in that instant I felt invincible, but what would happen the next time Ethelie chastized me? I knew I would curl up in a little ball and weep again. I am not yet strong enough to withstand her — but I will be.
So I did the only thing I could think of to buy myself more time: I crept into her room while she was at dinner, and left a freshly-opened bottle of laudanum on her nightstand! I knew she would not be able to resist its siren call — and I knew it would bring on a relapse of her “exhaustion.” It worked, and Ethelie is once again “resting” in the Infirmary, and I am free to write! Exquisite!
My angels, my beauties: I know you may judge me for my actions; but I did what I had to do to protect myself, and find my voice again. I could not let her silence me!
Tell me in the comments: who has silenced you? How did you overcome it? What can you do this week to find your voice again?
And pie! We shall have pie! I am so excited.
HooRay for you Lida!! Well done and may it be weeks before she wakes. Have some pie! = >
For me, I have been silenced by trying to write in a way I was not comfortable with, for an audience I don’t really understand. There is a lot of power in realizing you’ve been silencing yourself by having unreal or imagined expectations.
Also, I’m kinda lazy. *Shrug*
For me, it was a rejection letter I received from W—— which devastated me, and destroyed my confidence to the point where I withdrew all of my other outstanding submissions to all other markets and nearly gave up on writing entirely. It took me six months to get over that. Fortunately, I’m back to full form now.
My mother was a harpy (literally, I’m afraid, though she did possess a fantastic sense of humor), and my father was a banker with a whoring problem. When Mother was thrown in prison for murdering and devouring my father, an aunt and uncle I’d never met took me in.
For the next ten years I would serve them and their beastly children, without more than a few moments for myself. Under cover of night, I took to stealing dusty, unused tomes from the threadbare household library, continuing my education with whatever I could snatch and fit beneath my apron. My cousins, Angela (5) and Markum (9) called me “Ratty,” because I roomed with the rodents in the basement and because I cared for and fed the twitchy scurrying things. My favorite, the largest rat, lacked a right paw; I named it Prudence, because she did not nibble on my treasured books as her kin did, but sat upon them waiting for me to come, all beady, expectant eyes and musty fur.
On my tenth year with the family, I turned seventeen. My uncle had taken to gazing at me with glittering, intent eyes. My aunt had taken to thrashing me daily, and let the children take turns with the strap. They seemed to enjoy my pain; I do not now know if they had regrets or tender feelings, for these I did not witness. My aunt seemed to take great pleasure in telling me how my mother had hung by noose in prison, hung by fellow inmates. Her sharp tongue had been cut out and fed to her.
I escaped through imagination and lived a secret life in the books I had stolen. If not for these treasures, I would have buckled and broken. I confess, I often tamped down thoughts of anger, revenge, tantalising blood fantasies, but these were mitigated by Dickens and Hawthorne and Shakespeare. These stories assured me that I was the hero of my tale. My aunt, uncle and cousins were the villains, and in time, I would overcome. These Gods of Books wore their names on the covers, and I revered them and prayed to them daily. I could no more imagine being a writer of books than a fish dreams of being the Queen.
One fall evening, after a long day of work and of dodging my uncle’s increasingly malodorous appetites, I hurried down the creaking basement stairs, and was stopped by laughter and the scent of smoke … and something even more terrible that I could not name.
There, near my sleeping corner, were Cousins Angela, and Markum. My heart stuttered and then seized when, between their hunched shoulders, I found Prudence, atop a book stack, stabbed through with a silver letter opener, which they had pegged her to the floor with. The books were splayed, with curled and blackened pages, the precious words unreadable ashes. Prudence’s fur had been scorched away–her wrinkled skin oozed, and her beady eyes had been put out.
I retain no further memory of this day, nothing of the bloodletting reported on by the newspapers, not the grisly details of my aunt (found with the familiar lash stuffed down her throat), nor my uncle (his member severed). The papers refused to describe the murder of the “innocent children,” and would only say a silver letter opener had been involved.
I’m told that I screeched and clawed day and night, until my throat bled, and that they placed a mask upon on my face, for they could not bear the sight of my wordless mouth cursing them, blasting the world and everything upon it. I was sent to Arkham Asylum, where I spent ten years in absolute silence. As if to silence my tongueless, betrayed mother and the years with my aunt and uncle, I communicated with no one. Slowly, painfully, I recovered my senses, and came to understand something nearly unbearable: according to law, and all the literature I had read, I was not the hero. I was the villain.
I now regarded my writing gods as villains for creating stories that came to charitable ends, for fooling me into believing the world was a fair place, and most of all, for making me love them.
My doctor was patient. She encouraged my recovery, gave me pen, paper, taught me to write. She gave me a voice, and write I did–but nothing from the imagination. Only what was real.
And now I have come to the end of my stay in Arkham. It is an over-crowded misery here, so many more wanting entrance, none ready to venture out into that outside world. But I must go, because they say I am ready; I am reformed. I must now confess that I have taken recently to fiction. Indeed, my letter of apology was written with such poignant beauty, only a monster could read it and not weep. I myself wept at the disguised truths within it, and at understanding the power and beauty of fiction, and found I did not hate words any longer.
I was silenced by tragedy, by pain, by my past, and by wrong beliefs (in myself and others). My gods are dead, but I am not. I hold a pen in my hand. I hope it is enough.
Susanj, the lovely Susanj! Thank you very much for the pie. It was blueberry, and wonderful, though those pie stains may never come out of the sheets! O how I love buying new sheets!
Agent Maus! Agent Maus! I can’t wait to see what delights you will produce now that you’ve got your voice back.
Agent Richard, I’m stunned and saddened by your story, and offer you a consolatory pie. I am so glad to see that you have staged a dramatic comeback!
Agent Rocket. My goodness! What an amazing and incredible life you lead! We shall have such wonderful adventures together, you and I.